Alexander Nimmo's Inverness Survey and Journal, 1806

Description

Alexander Nimmo was an engineer and rector of Inverness Academy in Scotland. Here his travelogue of the wild region of Inverness in Scotland is published for the first time. In 1806 the Commission for Highland Roads and Bridges sent Nimmo on a fact-finding mission to survey the boundary of Inverness-shire with the adjacent counties. This journal of his 'perambulation' constitutes detailed observations on the people and places visited and describes the natural environment. It offers a valuable and interesting first-hand account of the shire and the Highlands and insight into Nimmo's personal transformation from a schoolmaster to one of the pathbreaking engineers of his century. Nimmo resigned his Rector's position in 1811 and took up a post with the Commission for the Bogs of Ireland. He completed unsurpassed surveys, maps and reports on the isolated regions of Iveragh peninsula of Co. Kerry and Connemara, Co. Galway. For his achievements he was made a Member of both the Royal Irish Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. This Inverness journal is edited and annotated by zoologist Noel P. Wilkins. It is accompanied by three essays that bring commentaries on politics and unrest in Scotland at the time, cartography, and the Inverness Academy. Reproduced within are two rare maps of the territory.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Historical geography
• Northern Scotland
• History of Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Royal Irish Academy
• Date de parution: 03 janvier 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908996527
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

ALEXANDER NIMMO S INVERNESS SURVEY & JOURNAL, 1806
~ E DITED BY N O L P. W ILKINS ~
Alexander Nimmo s Inverness survey and journal, 1806
First E-published 2014
by Royal Irish Academy 19 Dawson Street Dublin 2
www.ria.ie
The authors and publisher are grateful to the National Library of Scotland, the Royal Dublin Society and the Highland Folk Museum for permission to reproduce material in this book.
Text copyright 2011 the authors
The authors have asserted their moral rights.
ISBN 978-1-908996-52-7
All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owners.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Foreword
C HAPTER I: I NTRODUCTION
Alexander Nimmo s Inverness survey and journal, 1806: the original manuscript and its transcription
No l P. Wilkins
C HAPTER II
Alexander Nimmo: Rector of Inverness Royal Academy
Robert Preece
C HAPTER III
The Scottish Highlands and Ireland in the time of Alexander Nimmo
James Hunter
C HAPTER IV
A cartographic perambulation around Alexander Nimmo s Inverness-shire journal
Christopher Fleet
C HAPTER V
On becoming an engineer: Nimmo s survey and his engineering career
No l P. Wilkins
T HE JOURNAL
Journal along the North East and South of Inverness Shire. Ends at Fort William
Alexander Nimmo, 1806 and accompanying MSS
Bibliography
Notes on the authors
A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many persons contributed to the preparation of this volume. Mr Martyn Wade, National Librarian of Scotland, kindly gave access to, and permission to transcribe, the original MSS which are in the Library s care. Ms Sheila Mackenzie, Senior Manuscript Curator, facilitated and encouraged the project from the beginning and this is very much appreciated, as is the unfailing courtesy and assistance of the Library staff in the George IV Bridge reading room. Likewise Dr Peter Heffernan, MRIA and CEO of the Marine Institute of Ireland, actively encouraged and supported the endeavour from the outset and Professor Nicholas Canny, PRIA was also a constant support. Professors C.W.J. Withers, FRSE, University of Edinburgh, gave invaluable advice at the preliminary and final stages.
Ms Grace Uhr transcribed the first draft into a computer file from a photocopy of the original with consummate skill, care and accuracy, thereby making later drafts much easier to prepare and compare with the original MSS.
Ms Helena King, publications officer of the RIA, helped with the progress of the project from its initiation through the preparation and sponsorship processes to final completion.
We wish to thank the following for their assistance over a number of years in accessing material and sources in their care: The National Library of Scotland; the National Archive of Scotland, Edinburgh; the National Archives of Ireland, Dublin; Highland Council Archive, Inverness; the Highland Council Library Service and the Inverness Royal Academy Archive.
Special thanks go to the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland for permission to publish the transcript and Figures 1, 2 and 3 taken from it. The Royal Dublin Society kindly gave permission to reproduce the photograph of the bust of Nimmo in the Society s possession. It is the only known image of him.
The publication would not have been possible without generous sponsorship from the Marine Institute of Ireland, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Irish Academy for which we are truly grateful.
The National University of Ireland, Galway, provided continuing support without which the project could never have advanced.
F OREWORD

It is with pleasure that we introduce Alexander Nimmo s Inverness survey and journal, 1806 to a wider public. When the editor No l P. Wilkins suggested that the Royal Irish Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh come together to publish, for the first time, the account of our shared Member s perambulations in Inverness-shire, it made an attractive proposal.
The affiliation between the RIA and the RSE stretches back to origins. After the RSE was founded in 1783 for the Advancement of Learning and Useful Knowledge in Scotland, the benefits of forming an Irish analogue became clear. Just two years later in 1785, the RIA was established under similar rubric. The tradition of support and exchange of ideas has always animated the relationship between the two bodies. Alexander Nimmo put it well himself in his opening of a paper published in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy on 27 October 1823, titled On the Application of the Science of Geology to the purposes of Practical Navigation :
It is an old and perhaps a trite observation, that all the various branches of science are calculated to throw light upon each other; and hence, that an extended acquaintance with the several departments of natural knowledge is the surest way to attain to eminence in the pursuit of any one. In a society like this, composed of persons of different pursuits, and whose ideas are directed to a variety of objects, it is perhaps one of the greatest advantages, that, in any new enquiry, we may be enabled to draw from stores of information that are beyond the reach of any individual mind.
Nimmo s talents did not lie in one narrow discipline. He began his career as a schoolmaster before turning to the practical skills of civil engineering, which he by no means limited himself to, fascinated as he was in the different fields and aspects of rural life explored in this volume. Given his versatility and broad vision, he foresaw the possibilities of the learned society as a forum in which to exchange and generate knowledge and ideas. The RIA and the RSE continue this tradition, with a grant scheme aimed at fostering collaboration between researchers in both Ireland and Scotland.
Several Members have been elected to both institutions, covering both the arts and sciences. These include William Bald, the Scottish land surveyor and contemporary of Nimmo, whose principal achievement was in Ireland and, in the more recent past, the distinguished paleobotanist Sir Alwyn William and the eminent chemist, Charles Kemball, who both served as Presidents of the RSE. Today John Brewer, a sociologist with expertise in peace processes, and Tom Devine, a leading Scottish historian are also members of both.
Alexander Nimmo s legacy differs in each country. In Ireland he is chiefly remembered for his engineering innovations in Connemara and Kerry under the Famine Relief Act of 1822, creating safe havens for boats by building piers, founding the village of Roundstone and building road infrastructure, including the stunning carriage road from Maam Cross to Leenane. In Scotland he is remembered as Rector of Inverness Academy and, crucially, for his public work surveying and mapping the boundaries of Inverness-shire. He undertook the commission on a vast scale in 1806, when only in his early twenties.
200 years after his election as a Fellow of the RSE, Nimmo s work remains stimulating and relevant, allowing scholars and engineers to draw from the stores of information he recorded as they go about planning and reshaping the infrastructure of Scotland and Ireland.
We look forward to continued active and productive collaboration between the RIA and the RSE into the future.
Nicholas Canny, PRIA Sir John Arbuthnott, MRIA, FRSE, President-elect RSE

Map showing Alexander Nimmo s itinerary as described in his Inverness journal. Principal stopping points with dates are given, against a backdrop of John Thomson s Scotland , Plate 15 of his A new general atlas (1815), showing the new county boundaries, as revised by Nimmo.

Sketch map 1, Nimmo s sketch of the boundary to the east of Inverness captioned by Nimmo: A sketch map in pen of the boundary from the Moray firth to Budzeat.

Sketch map 2, four miles to one inch. Captioned by Nimmo: The Heads of the Beaulie River etc. with the county boundary in Glasletir.
C HAPTER I~I NTRODUCTION

T HE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT AND ITS TRANSCRIPTION 1
~ No l P. Wilkins ~
Introduction
In the late eighteenth century social and economic life in the Scottish Highlands underwent a radical transformation. 2 In brief, the old social order-a clan-based, quasi-feudal system-was passing away. While the landowning lairds became increasingly anglicised and gentrified, their tacksmen first, followed later by their lower tenants, were forced to emigrate. 3 Emigration freed up land that the lairds could then rent out (at greatly inflated prices) to willing lowlanders and others, increasing the lairds monetary wealth even as they displaced their erstwhile loyal clansmen. The lairds and the new leasees stocked the hills and rough pastures with sheep, further squeezing the few poor tenants who remained. Thomas Telford summed up the transformation pithily: the lairds have transferred their affections from the people to flocks of sheep and the people have lost their veneration for the lairds . 4
Writers, politicians and academics, even some military men, had been describing the predicament of the Highlands for years: individual glens were isolated; road communication was extremely poor or non-existent; there was no paid work and few tools or skills; and the inhabitants- [who] may be considered as prisoners strongly guarded by impassable mountains on one side, by swamps and furious torrents on the other 5 -were sinking into increased isolation, poverty and despair. In 1786 the British Fisheries Society was founded with a view to encouraging the fishing industry by the construction of new fishing villages, and later by championing the case for building new road